


A Nice Man

by wildeisms



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, Oblivious Neighbours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 19:04:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10169726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildeisms/pseuds/wildeisms
Summary: Everyone in the community knows Mr Kowalski and, to a lesser extent, the nice man he lives with.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarahshelena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahshelena/gifts).



> Inspired by an ask meme answer from sarahshelena on tumblr: _"can they just get married and live above jacob’s bakery and smooch and their neighbors aren’t douchebags but are like supportive like “oh that’s mister kowalski and that Nice Man he lives with ^w^”"_
> 
> This was such a cute image I couldn't resist writing it.

Kowalski’s Quality Baked Goods had been a staple in the community for years, and everyone knew Mr Kowalski himself. He was the type of man to chat animatedly to the children and slip them little free treats with a conspiratorial wink, to welcome his regulars by name and ask after their families, to listen with rapt attention and an interested smile whenever his customers had a story to share. He was always smiling, as if he were the luckiest man in the world. And indeed, if you were to ask him, he’d say that he was.

And yet despite his open nature and happiness with his life, his personal life remained somewhat of a mystery. If you were to ask any of his regular customers to tell you about Jacob Kowalski’s life, all they could tell you was that his grandmother had been a lovely Polish woman who had taught him to bake, and he now lived above his bakery with a nice man by the name of Newt Scamander, who was from England and a very dear friend to Mr Kowalski, if the smile that lit up his eyes whenever he talked about him was anything to go by. 

“You’d think he’d want a girl, though,” Mrs Blumenthal often mused. She was an elderly woman, but maintained that she still had her wits about her, and had proved that particular fact beyond any shadow of a doubt when she had caught a young boy saying some particularly vulgar things about her daughter while she was working, and had very promptly shown him the business end of her walking stick. As if her Violet would ever go with someone like that, anyway. It was an insult, really. Mr Kowalski, on the other hand… Well, he was getting on in years now, must be nearing his fortieth, and Violet was both lovely and available should he be looking to court anyone.

“Don’t you go interfering, trying to force your Violet on him,” Mrs Rothman would say sternly, usually in between frankly unladylike bites of her pastry. Jacob Kowalski may be a lovely man, but she would never understand Peggy Blumenthal’s obsession with mentally pairing her daughter up with every lovely man she met. Besides, despite his gentlemanly airs and jovial nature, Mr Kowalski had never shown more than friendly interest in a female customer, even when they showed far more than friendly interest in him. He was polite, as always, but no matter how many hints he received, he never even offered to take a girl out. Yet somehow, this didn’t deter Peggy Blumenthal in the slightest. She remained convinced that Mr Kowalski - and, to a lesser extent, the reclusive and awkward Mr Scamander, who occasionally made an appearance in the bakery and out around the city with Mr Kowalski - needed the love of someone, preferably Violet, to be truly happy.

(She had tried to set them up only once, but to no avail. For the first minute of the whole affair, Mr Scamander had seemingly had no idea what was going on, only to turn a remarkably vivid shade of pink upon realisation and stammer a garbled excuse before retreating very quickly into the back of the bakery.)

If the details of Mr Kowalski’s life were unclear, the details of Mr Scamander’s were entirely non-existent. The general consensus was that he was some kind of academic who worked within the apartment, as no one ever saw him coming and going at a regular time or frequently enough to suggest he had regular employment. He couldn’t be unemployed, not if he had such a nice place and was able to pay his share of the rent, unless of course, he came from money, which, as Mr Mayhew would tell anyone when the topic came up, many of these eccentric British types did. But whatever he did for a living, no one could fault him on his kindness and good nature - expressed in a much more shy, quiet manner than Mr Kowalski’s, yes, but no less present -  leading to most of the community thinking of him simply as the nice man who lived with Jacob Kowalski. Those two are such wonderful friends, they’d say as they saw the pair walking side by side through the park or standing in line for the movies, Jacob Kowalski and that nice man Mr Scamander. What fine, upstanding gentlemen they both were, how nice it was to see them enjoying each other’s company.

If you were to ask Violet Blumenthal about the pair, however, she’d smile faintly and provide you with some vague answer about how they certainly are very close, and then go back to eyeing the lovely brunette friend of Mr Kowalski’s who occasionally stopped by the bakery and wondering idly how she was going to get out of the next date her mother decided to arrange for her. 


End file.
